LOADS AND ROADS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 139, 16 June 1930, Page 8

LOADS AND ROADS

Without deciding on any course of action, the Makara County Council discussed the overloading of heavy motor-lorries and the consequent damage to roads. One councillor thought that heavy loads did not make much difference to the bitumen roads; and with a sufficient thickness of bitumen this is probably correct. But the damage is done when the heavily-loaded vehicle runs off the bitumen on to the sealed or macadam road. Then the maintenance bill rises. To keep this in check the bitumen road is extended, though the average weight of traffic may not demand such extension. With roads, as with bridges, the standard of construction is fixed by the maximum stress, not by the average. The roadmaker must decide whether it is more economical to raise the standard sof construction or to compel the reduction of die maximum load. His guide surely must be the average. It would be extravagant to make all the roads to carry ten-ton lorries; but it would be equally unwise to fix a low minimum in traffic areas where the heavy lorry is the most economical transport unit. This is a subject, however, on which the Main Highways Board may afford useful guidance to local bodies. It gives such guidance now through the regulations fixing the weight of vehicles; but if the regulations were supplemented by a statement of the grounds on which they, are made the county councils would see more clearly the necessity of enforcing them.